May 28, 2011

I'm sitting in a hotel room in Edinburgh where I never intended to be until yesterday. No lie, I booked this room by using a web site called "last minute [dot] com." It figures that the day of my return trip to the states would have to be a Sunday. On Sundays, trains just don't run as often as they do on all the other days of the week, I've found. I have a flight leaving Edinburgh at about 11 AM tomorrow morning, and with all the stuff that can go wrong or slow you down in an airport you're supposed to get there two or three hours early. So my plan was to catch a train from Glasgow to Edinburgh by 7 AM tomorrow morning. But tomorrow is a Sunday, so I wasn't too surprised, despite my disappointment, when I went online two days ago and checked the train schedule only to find that the earliest train to Edinburgh would leave Glasgow at 7:50. That would be cutting it way too close, so here I am spending the night in Edinburgh in a hotel room that I reserved yesterday. Turns out, lucky for me, it's really nice here. The room is lovely. Big bed. Clean bathroom. Lots more space than my old flat. Small TV with its own iPod dock which means I've been simultaneously charging my iPod and listening to some podcasts through the television's speakers. Plus, it's technically a "guest house," so I got a warm welcome on my way in a few hours ago. I didn't really understand what a guest house was up until tonight, but from what I've gathered it's like a larger, more upscale bed and breakfast. Someone answered the door and took me to my room, where she showed my how to use the television, the shower, etc. It was all very friendly and accomodating, and I wish I didn't have to leave in only about eight hours.

I don't have a whole hell of a lot on my mind to say, but I really wanted to post another entry here before my trip back. This is my last blog entry from Scotland, which would be a more melancholy and remarkable event if I hadn't restarted blogging only earlier this month. I could try to tell you what the last five months of my life have been like, but I don't have all night, what with the early flight. I have two flights, actually. The first goes from Edinburgh to London, and the second is from London to Newark. Originally the first was supposed to depart at 11 AM, the second at 4 PM. Recently, though, I got an email alerting me about CHANGES to my return flight in urgent capital letters. I compared my new e-ticket to the old one to find that said CHANGES were just slight nudges in the wrong direction for both flights, such that the early flight is ten minutes earlier and the second flight is fifteen minutes later. This means that, if everything runs according to schedule tomorrow, my layover in London will last exactly four hours. Luckily, Kevin Smith and his network produce, no joke, at least five hours of new podcast content per day, and I have some catching up to do because of my recent week-long final Eurotrip extravaganza, which went swimmingly except for the one night I suffered food poisoning in Cologne. It's okay, though, because of this one joke I got out of the experience: "In Germany I got food poisoning. It was the wurst!" Only trouble is that this joke only works in text form. I couldn't deliver it out loud without winking or something, so it'll never make its way into my always-growing stand-up routine that I'll never perform. My cousin Andrew suggested I put it on a t-shirt, so look for that on sale soon. I wonder if I still have a functioning CafePress account. Is that still a web site?

My mind is being pulled in so many different directions right now, so the question "Wait, where was I?" is pretty much meaningless. So maybe a better question is "Where are you going?" Right now my layover in London Heathrow is occupying my mind almost as much as my return to New York. Last time I set foot in that airport, I felt absolutely miserable after a six-hour overnight flight from Newark on which I couldn't sleep at all. I was so tired I thought I was going to be sick. On the short flight from London to Edinburgh that followed, suddenly I couldn't stop falling asleep. For the rest of the day, the beginning of my study abroad program orientation, I was wretchedly jetlagged. I think I went to bed at 7 PM and slept for about twelve hours. This time around, I'm hopeful I'll have a more pleasant stay in the London airport. I'll be tired, perhaps, but no reason to be jetlagged from my first flight, which is only about an hour. Four hours, though, is a long time to wait for a flight. Luckily, besides a sizeable library of podcasts, I also have this great book joining me on my journey. It's a novel called You Shall Know Our Velocity! by Dave Eggers, who is perhaps better known for his memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or for editing McSweeney's. I received this book as a gift from my girlfriend months ago, but I only got around to starting it in the last few weeks, and frankly that couldn't have worked out better. Five months ago, I wouldn't have appreciated this novel nearly as much, because of the amount of traveling that goes on in it. So far I haven't been anywhere described, and that's not likely to happen since the characters are visiting some rather obscure, often impoverished destinations, but just the descriptions of their trip planning and their flights and their culture shock and their cherishing a new place has really spoken to my recent experience.

But then, of course, maybe an even better question is, "Where have you been?" My goal for this semester was to stay in ten countries, so with the U.S. and Canada included I could say I've been to a total of twelve. Well, somehow an extra country slipped into the mix (I'm looking at you, Wales), and now I've got a baker's dozen under my belt. Someday I'll likely tell you more about these places, but now is more of a time to reflect on Glasgow, as that's where I've spent most of the last five months and it's the city I'm leaving behind. I've become quite fond of the West End of Glasgow. It was a thrill to study at a school that looks like it could be Hogwarts if you're just looking at the Main Building. I found favorite pubs and restaurants that I may never visit again. And I made some friends, a few of them locals. I spent my last days in Glasgow with my girlfriend, walking around to my favorite places and eating only my favorite meals, taking little video clips wherever we went so that at some point this summer I can create a little video love letter to the city for my YouTube channel. It's an honor to have been a Glaswegian for almost half a year, though if I'm being honest I probably won't miss the accent. Seriously, I can't understand what any of you are saying half the time. I do hope I return, though, someday. In the meantime, please welcome me back in America. I promise I'll go back to saying "French fries," or even "freedom fries" if you should ever insist, though at the back of my mind a wee part of me will always remind me they're called chips.

May 17, 2011

Above is a travel video (or vlog, if you prefer) which lasts not much longer than about five minutes, and despite that it took me many hours of the day to create it. When I finally managed to upload it to YouTube, it was about two A.M. here, and the feeling is bittersweet. I should feel a sense of accomplishment because now I have something to show for all that hard work, instead of nothing which I thought I'd have because for a while there Windows Movie Maker was failing me so horribly. Making this video was such a constant rollercoaster, propelling me between the highs of "Hey, I might actually be making something funny and enjoyable" and "I feel so stupid filming myself talking, how do people like Alex and Charlie do this all the time?" or "Am I ever going to get this horrible program to work?"

At the beginning of this day I naively thought that this new vlog would be one of several semi-productive tasks that I might accomplish today. For instance, I fully intended to write a fuller, more legitimate blog entry, probably about how I lined up my new summer job despite being in a different country or (speaking of strikes, as in the video above) the teachers' strike that I've failed to mention in all of my rants and raves about how few times I actually had to go to class during my semester here. I also have loads of pictures from Wales, as well as a small handful of photos from stupid Manchester, that I've managed to edit but not to put up on Facebook yet, which sounds like it should take no time at all, except I made a pact with myself a long time ago that I would caption every picture I put online and for some reason I feel bound to that vow. Now it's well after two in the morning and I still haven't packed for my next big trip. Tomorrow I'm going to Stirling to stay with Dana because tomorrow morning we're both traveling to Edinburgh, where we're flying out to Brussels, staying there two nights, then taking a train to Cologne, one night there, followed by an extremely long train ride to Prague, my final big European destination, where we're staying a total of four nights. I've only just started to look into online travel guides that might tell us what to see and do in these cities, and tomorrow I have to print out loads of boarding passes, reservations, maps, etc. Classes and exams may be over until the fall, but the busy work never seems to end.

That's all I've got for you right now, and for a while actually, because of the aforementioned week-long trip. After that I'll have only two days left in Glasgow before I fly back home on the 29th. Hopefully I'll have time to write again within that narrow window, in between shifts of packing up all of my present belongings. If not, then the next time I talk to you I'll be stateside. In lieu of more textual ramblings, I hope you've enjoyed the video embedded above, and I encourage you to check out the previous three travel videos on my YouTube channel. Alright, enough self-promotion. Good night.

May 16, 2011

This is good. I've been hearing some kind words about my recent bloggy efforts, and it's nice to know that some people are reading. I would have written more in the past week, but I went from being busy taking my final exams to immediately doing more traveling. On Thursday my girlfriend, a mutual friend, and I went down to Wales, mostly for the sake of adding another name to the list of countries I've been to (currently an even ten, though it will reach thirteen by the end of the month). We traveled by train from Glasgow to a city in Wales called Llandudno, which I'm still not entirely sure how to pronouce. I'm sorry if this may come across as culturally insensitive, but Welsh is a funny language. To the best of my limited knowledge, I think that their alphabet is missing a few of the letters that we have in English, and they find the strangest ways to arrange what letters they do have. For instance, I'm looking at a trash can out on the street, and on one side it says "Litter" but on the other it says, "Ysbwriel." I memorized that word just to illustrate this point. I hope it's fixed in my brain for a long time to come, because come on, what a word, right? Ysbwriel. I'd love to tell you that it feels good rolling off the tongue, but I haven't even tried to say it out loud. I wouldn't even know where to begin in my attempts to pronounce it. Should I give the opening "y" its consonant sound as in "yes"? Or treat it like a vowel as in "sky"? These are the sort of things I'd like to ask a Welsh person if I knew one.

I learned another great word in the past week or so, but thankfully I can actually use this one because it's in English. I was just talking about this word over a drink at a nearby pub with a couple of friends. I first saw it during my final exams here when I looked down at the front cover of what they call a "copy book" here, and they have printed all these little lines for you to fill in your name and the date and everything else, as well as a set of instructions. I was reading over this list of directions, because I was new to all this and I didn't want to mess it up, when I saw the line reminding me to listen to the "invigilator" of the exam. "The what," I thought and almost said aloud. So, while I waited for the official start time of the test, I sat and repeated this word in my head over and over so that I'd remember it later when I wanted to look it up. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (as accessed online, obviously, because I'm not lugging that thing around when I pack my bag traveling between here and the states), an invigilator is "one who watches over students at examination," proving once again that the English language can and does have a word for any definition, no matter how specific or obscure. That's not a criticism, though. I really like this word. It suggests way more authority than a word like "proctor" or anything else we might call such a person in the states. I like the commanding "-or" suffix, suggesting an almost superhero-like quality, far superior to its weaker cousin "-er." I like its common ancestral root with the word "vigilance." I feel like "invigilator" might have reignited an old passion for words, bringing me back toward the days when I didn't delete the "Word of the Day" emails from Dictionary.com as soon as I got them.

I just got distracted from writing this blog entry for maybe an hour or more, mostly because a friend was sending me several messages on VYou. What the heck was I writing about? Words? I don't know, I'm trying to make it a new policy to dive into these blog posts without a strict plan for what I'm writing about, and now this is the result, I guess. For lack of a better train of thought, I think I'll backtrack and tell you more about my trip to Wales. What do you know about Wales? For a long time I had no idea it was a country. Then even later than that I learned that it's part of the United Kingdom. I think it was my girlfriend, Dana, who first brought up the possibility of going to Wales, and it just seemed like the thing to do since it's on the same island as the country we're staying in. The obvious destination would have been the captial city, Cardiff, but all the trains we could find going there were way out of our price range. Somehow Dana discovered this city called Llandudno, which I'd definitely think was a typo if I ever saw that on a map. It took a few hours, but by train we finally made it there in the late afternoon on Thursday. It was a very short walk from the train station to our hostel, which was easily the nicest hostel I've stayed in during my time abroad. What do you think of when you hear "hostel"? Probably that horror movie of the same name, right? Makes sense, considering that some hostels can be horrifying places. This one, however, boasted itself as an "affordable four-star hostel," and it delivered on that seemingly dubious promise. The three of us got to stay in an eight-bed dorm room which we had all to ourselves. There were sinks in it, a teapot, a little chandelier hanging from the ceiling--all sorts of nice, little accomodations that you don't expect from a hostel.

We walked around the city for a while that evening. After dinner at a fish and chip shop, we went to the beach nearby, where the tide was in so it was mostly nothing but rocks to walk on. We walked along the shoreline until we came to the pier where we passed loads of shops, stands, and games that were all closed down. Later we entered a national park and walked around a big cliffside until we could see the sunset. I'm not gonna lie, Wales was making a pretty good impression on me. I don't know why, but I like being in places that are on the water. That was one of the things I liked best about Geneva when I visited over spring break--walking around the lake, taking boats over it, admiring the huge fountain they have there, and just seeing the water as we moved around the city. Even here in Glasgow one of my favorite areas is walking through the park and seeing the River Kelvin. Llandudno had a really nice coastline with great views of mountains surrounding it. After the magical sunset watching, we went back to our amazing hostel for a night in our basically private room. The next morning we were planning on taking the city's cable cars up into the mountains, but we were told they weren't running that day due to the wind. I was a little surprised to hear that, given it's so close to the water and it must always get windy up in those hills, so come to think of it this doesn't exactly seem like the best place for a cable car line, does it? That was just as well for me, though, because I don't do well with heights (yes, ironic given my size), so a cable car ride probably would have freaked me out. Instead we took a tram ride up into the mountains, where we got to walk around in what was indeed some intense wind, but it's worth it for the impressive, photogenic landscape.

After two nights in lovely Llandudno, on Saturday morning the three of us traveled by train to Manchester, where we'd spend most of the day until moving on back to Scotland later that evening. This is another subject I was just discussing with friends over a drink at the pub, and someone else has backed me up on this so it's not just me saying it: Manchester is boring. Seriously, this has to be my least favorite destination out of all the cities I've been to so far. Okay, I might have more negative memories associated with Perugia, Italy because of an incident involving a train strike which really threw off our spring break plans for a whole day or more, but that was a nationwide phenomenon and Perugia, which was actually a rather nice city, wasn't really to blame. When we got into Manchester, we walked to Picadilly Gardens hoping to see the fountains that come up out of the ground there, but they weren't running either because of nearby construction or it was too cold, I don't know. We spent a lot of time walking around and seeing nothing of particular interest. At one point we found an art gallery which was nothing special but better than nothing at all, I suppose. We didn't even make it to the football stadium which is probably the only notable thing to see. My time in this city was so boring that I almost didn't get a postcard from it, even though I've been collecting postcards from every city, and when I did buy one I made my choice ironically, because it says "I [heart] Manchester" (and I don't) and that's it because there's no image of the city printed on it, just a plain white background, which to me seemed like a statement about what I did there.

To be fair, I'll say that Manchester did have two things going for it in my mind by the end of the day. The first was what we had for dinner: burritos from a place called BARBURRITO. The second is that Manchester is the first place I've been to in all my time outside the United States where I have found a Krispy Kreme. At home, I don't even go for Krispy Kreme that much. I'm a fan of their products, but I've only had them on certain occasions. On a regular basis I'm much more into Dunkin Donuts, which by the way they also don't have over here. But when I saw that Krispy Kreme near Picadilly Gardens in Manchester, it was the most delightful little glimpse of home and I just had to indulge. My curiosity and nostalgia for American obesity-enablers were rewarded with something wonderful called a "cookies 'n' cream donut," which I never knew was possible. Thinking back, I don't know why I didn't buy a dozen of them. I hope they make those in the states. Anyway, food advantages aside, I won't remember Manchester very fondly. Dana and I spent a lot of time just waiting at the train station for lack of anything better to do, and it was there that Manchester's reputation for football hooliganism really came alive before our eyes and especially our ears. I don't follow soccer or football or whatever you want to call it (nor do I follow any sport for that matter), so I can only assume that Manchester's team must have won something very recently, because boy were they celebrating. When 6:46 PM finally rolled around, I was happy to leave behind these obnoxious displays of drunken revelry, as well as the boring city surrounding them, even though it meant a four-hour bus ride to Glasgow after about forty-five minutes on the train, an undesirable travel arrangement that Dana and I agreed to undergo because it only cost eleven pounds.

Oh, the bus. Here I am all ready to wrap up this blog entry because I think I'm done with my story, when of course I have to remember our travel companions on the bus. When the bus left Preston, where we got off the train, I was hoping that it would just drive straight to Glasgow, but unfortunately it made one stop on the way. Where, I have no idea. With this single stop, however, the population of the bus must have tripled. Dana and I are sitting in the way back where I can have the most leg room, and I watch as more and more people climb onto our peaceful bus. It's late at this point, and the bus won't arrive in Glasgow until close to midnight. Everyone seems pretty quiet and calm, most looking to get some sleep, all except for these two girls who have now joined us at the back of the bus, one row in front of me and to our left. These girls are drunk and still drinking, right out of big bottles of white wine. You could have easily done a casting call for the British version of Jersey Shore on this bus. They kept calling us "bus people" when they wanted attention, like we were natives on this bus or something. These girls started singing "Crazy Train" on a bus. Who does that? That's like singing "I'm on a Boat" while riding any other form of transportation besides boat. Time goes by and they only get drunker, losing the capacity for full sentences, shouting, "Driver turn heat off now please," a call that would remain unheeded. So for well over an hour we're treated to their inebriated antics, dropping their phones and taking forever to find them again, while everyone else on the bus turns to show off annoyed looks over their shoulders every so often. Of course they could never take a hint in their lives, but at a certain point, like so many of us were trying to, they fall asleep. No, pass out. Later I heard wine pouring out onto the floor, and even later an empty bottle rolled up to Dana's feet. And now, like me for the time being, those two marvelous drunks are right back where they belong: Glasgow. Unless, of course, no one bothered to wake them, in which case they may still be on that bus, licking old wine off the upholstered seats and obliviously going wherever the driver takes them, like the true bus people that they've become.

May 09, 2011

Now that I've had the first of my two exams, I guess I should follow up on the concerns I raised in my last blog entry. When I turned off the light and put my head to the pillow last night, I was more worried about the horrifying possibility of sleeping in and missing the exam than I was about actually taking it. I don't have an actual alarm clock. It's the same as how no one in my generation wears a wristwatch. I have the time on my cell phone (or "cellular telephone" for Arrested Development fans), and I also depend on it for my alarms in the morning. Unfortunately, it has proven on a couple of occasions that it's not entirely reliable, and I've proven time and time again that I really prefer to sleep in late. I had to set a back-up alarm on my iPod Touch before I could let myself get to sleep. As it turns out, I woke up just fine this morning, though I didn't like it, and I had more than enough time to get to my exam room. I arrived at the building maybe fifteen or twenty minutes early, found the room, sat in a chair outside listening to a podcast and opening my notebook for some last minute cramming. I'm sitting on the far right end of a long row of cushy theater seats, not surprising because the room they're holding the exam in is a theater, since they need such a big space to fit all the students. I watch more and more of my peers filing into the hallway until I see a familiar face, at which point I really start to look down at my notebook more intently, keenly aware of the seat to my left that still remains open. Not for long, though. I've got nothing against this guy, really. It's just, well, you read a little about him already, because he worked with me on my first presentation, the one that didn't go well.

Not only does he sit down next to me, but he taps me on the knee first, because you know I've got my headphones in and I'm looking down. So I do the polite thing by looking up and saying hi, but I don't do all the polite things because I also keep my headphones in and go back to staring at my notebook. As soon as he sits down next to me, I smell it. He smokes fags (remember: cigarettes), and it's all over him. Like he just emptied out twenty cartons and bathed in them. So already my morning is really unpleasant, and the exam hasn't even begun yet. When the doors are finally opened, I wait for him to get up and go inside so I can sit nowhere near him. No way I could concentrate on essay writing with that level of nicotine funk. I find an empty desk and I'm reminded of what bothers me most about being a visiting student in a foreign land: everyone else here has done stuff like this several times before, so they just do it like it's nothing and nobody explains it to chumps like me. By observation of my surroundings and the papers on my desk, I figure out what I'm supposed to fill in before the exam and that I'm supposed to leave my student ID card on the desk to prove it's me or whatever. I'm starting to wonder (sorry, this isn't one of those times when I'm using the "past present," I'm actually just now wondering this): Can you tell that I'm really tired? It's not even that late, not for me anyway, but I've been exhausted for hours, and I'm just curious if it's coming through in my writing. Like, I don't know if I'd normally be so lazy as to use a phrase like "or whatever." Maybe it's just my blog prose starting to un-stiffen, which would be nice.

Oh, right, the exam. It went pretty much as I expected. There were more than twenty essay questions provided, and I only had to answer two of them. So reading all of these avaiable questions was the first task, then picking the right two for me was another matter, followed by thinking up what I was going to write about, and lastly actually writing down the two essays. All these things considered, I was definitely racing to put down all my thoughts as the last fifteen minutes or so ticked by. That said, I think I managed to create two reasonably well thought out essays given the time constraints, and I feel happy and relieved knowing how it went. I wound up writing one essay which I was prepared for (about modern developments in techniques of storytelling by looking at The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford and Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad) and one essay on a subject that I never expected to write about (sexuality in modern literature using the examples of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan). Of course, if you want to feel the reward of a job well done, it always helps to know that you were meant to do the job in the first place, and in the past two or three days I've discovered that I don't have that luxury. I should have realized this months ago, when I was introduced to the university's English literature department during orientation, but I guess I put it out of my mind and just went along for the ride. The news recently resurfaced, though, in the form of an old piece of paper I came across during my studies. Hang on, I'll stop being cryptic about it now.

So over the weekend I was looking through a bunch of handouts from past lectures when I found a sheet that I received from an English professor who ran a little intro meeting for visiting students. What I remember him telling us on the subject of finals is that often in the past visiting students haven't taken exams and have instead written an extra essay, and I was under the impression that this was merely an option. Later, during the first week of classes, I raised this concern with my Irish literature professor, who advised me to think over the possibilities and seemed to suggest that taking the exam was the reasonable thing to do. Cut back to Saturday and I'm looking down at this sheet entitled "Examination Arrangements for Visiting Students," and it says the following: "Visiting Students are not expected to sit examinations." (I did not mistype anything; it says exactly that). It continues, "Instead, a second essay should be submitted at the end of the course." With my first exam only two days away at this point, I was understandably concerned, so I emailed someone in the department that works with visiting students seeking their advice. In addition to cc-ing the professor who introduced me to all this, she sent me a series of mixed messages which basically amounted to: "Yes, take your exams. But in the past these exams have not been open to visiting students. And I've heard nothing of this policy changing. Except when I recently heard a student say something to that effect." Fast forward to when that same English professor gets in touch with us both saying that it's best that I take my exams and he'll ensure I receive credit for them, but "technically he should have submitted two essays and I made this as clear as possible at the beginning of both semesters."

I now have a few things to rant about. First of all, when he says, "as clear as possible," does he means as clear as humanly possible? Or just as is possible for him specifically? Because, between me, him, other visiting students, my Irish lit professor, and the woman I initially emailed about this, there have clearly been multiple levels of miscommunication on this front, so maybe he has a limited capacity for making things clear. (In fairness, I actually really like the guy, based on the lectures I've seen him give, and he has been of some help to me in the past couple of days.) But now, going back to the sheet that started all this, notice that the second essay which I never wrote was supposed to be due at the end of the course. Anyone who might think that such a deadline would fall around this time of year will be corrected by the very next statement on the handout: "The deadline is the same as for the first essay." So, under these circumstances, which I will remind you are supposed to be typical, I would have had to undergo approximately double the amount of essay writing assigned to the average student of the university. I would have had two essays due for each of my two classes on the same exact date. And, to top it all off, this date was in March. I'll remind you now (as I love to do) that I haven't had classes since late March, and ever since it's been kind of a joke that I'm still over here just to study and take a couple of exams. But imagine how ridiculous these circumstances would be if you removed those exams. I signed on to live in this dorm through the end of May, and no one at the university or my study abroad program advised me otherwise, and yet it is their expectation in this department that visiting students will wrap up all their schoolwork before spring break. I'd have no academic reason to be here for two months.

And while I'm ranting, the way I've undergone this semester, as I technically wasn't supposed to, doesn't seem much more sensible to me anyway. I know that I've formed biases after years immersed in the educational system of the states, but I can't shake the feeling that it's ridiculous how little time university students spend in class over here. Seminar groups meet for discussion as little as an hour a week, when at my home university such classes would be conducted for over three times that amount. Yes, that can get awfully tedious at times, but thankfully it also means I actually have time to form ideas with my peers and later I can remember fundamental things about the texts we read. Most of my studying for these exams has consisted of memorizing the names of authors and characters, which I don't have committed to memory because I simply haven't talked about them enough. Then you have the lectures over here, which take everything we've learned about the importance of conversation and interaction and engaging with a subject and just throw all that out the window. And I sense that the students here may share that view on lectures, not because of anything that I've heard them say, but because of the consistently poor attendance that I've seen for so many of the lectures that I attended in my time here. When I saw the examination room full of my peers this morning, I was shocked at the number of people who took this course, because back in those eleven weeks of lectures (ten, actually, if you don't count "reading week") I saw so few of them. Maybe I'm reaching an unfair judgment, but I think that many of my local peers understand the bare minimum amount of work that they have to do to keep up with these classes. When I think of how much more time I typically spend just sitting in class or writing more papers than what I've seen here, it bothers me to think that the degrees earned here will be worth the same as mine, or perhaps more if you take school reputation into account.

Yes, okay, I'm glad I got all of that out. Nothing like a good old fashioned rant to put a spring in your step. But I can't forget about the positive notes that you should take away from this. One of my exams is over, and it went well enough. And more importantly, through the powers of confusion and apathy alone, I got out of writing two additional essays in March. I'm not sure whether to say "Take that!" or "Thank you."

May 06, 2011

I'm going to see how much of a blog post I can create in less than an hour, because let me tell you: the way I write these things, it generally takes longer than that. But it's already very late, and I have old episodes of Community that I like to watch before I go to bed. My sleeping (and waking) habits haven't exactly been healthy since my classes ending in late March (I still get a kick out of saying that). Either I'm traveling around Europe, getting up at absurb hours and running on fumes in order to catch a bus to take a plane et cetera ad nauseum, or I'm staying here in my flat, and behaving much the same way that I would at home on a break from school, staying up so late it's early and sleeping in past noon. Sometimes it's a habit that suits me and I'm comfortable with it; other times I feel pathetic for it. I feel better knowing that it can't last forever, especially because I have a summer job lined up. So I'm just taking advantage of this "unstructured time" (there's a term left over from high school) while I still have it. And apparently the best use of my time is avoiding daylight and watching NBC sitcom reruns.

None of that is completely true. My time isn't totally unstructured. Many of my peers at the University of Glasgow are spending long hours at the library, diligently preparing for their upcoming final exams. I see Facebook statuses about it everyday, posted by the very small handful of friends I've made since I've been here. And I can't help but think, Why am I not at the library? Should I be hard at work? As we've discussed recently, I have two exams coming up as well, one on Monday and the other on Wednesday, also known as all too soon. Have I been studying? In my own way, yes, but not to the extent that my classmates are, if Facebook is to be believed. But how does one study for a literature exam? It's not something that I've been asked to do since high school. The most I've done so far is take stock of all that I read for each class this past semester, and I've taken some notes on character names to remember and key quotes from certain novels. So far this process really hasn't taken up much of my time. I've spent far more energy and effort writing new blog entries and editing videos. (Speaking of which, I just posted a new travel vlog, so please check it out.) Thus certain questions plague me: Am I doing too little to prepare for these tests? Or am I studying to the proper extent for someone who only needs to pass with a C- or above and his real GPA at home won't be affected at all? (It doesn't help that the grading system isn't the same here as it is in the states. I got a B3 on my last paper. I've been here four months and I still don't know what that means.)

When I think of the fine line between preparing and underpreparing, I'm reminded of the two presentations that I had to do this semester, both for Irish Literature Since the 1880's. Of my two classes (still tickled by that), this one was generally more enjoyable to read for but more stressful to attend. The professor in charge of my seminar group is a much older gentleman, who had a nasty cold at the beginning of the semester, which didn't help his mood, I believe. It also didn't help that one of his biggest pet peeves concerns students who don't show up to the first meeting of the seminars, because they miss so much organizational business stuff. He made this very clear by email in the days prior, so of course I was there to receive all the necessary information and the intimidating first impression that the man himself left on me. Unfortunately, the first meeting was not perfectly attended. The following week, more students showed up, and the professor asked them each why they missed the previous class. One girl said that she was stuck in Cuba because she'd been vacationing there and her flight back was canceled or some such thing. Now, as excuses for absenteeism go, I think that "stranded in country under communist rule" is a pretty good one, but not everyone shares my opinion. The professor's immediate response was exclamatory and NSFW, as we say on this 'net. You can see why I was a little frightened, especially at the idea of presenting in this class.

But it was unavoidable, of course. Each student had to take part in not one but two group presentations. For the first round, I signed up for the last possible presentation date, like a true chicken. (Or was it second to last? I think perhaps it was, but it's not as funny that way.) I tried to learn from the presenters who went before me, all of whom were subjected to a good deal of questioning from the professor, yet they always seemed to gain his favor generally. Based on what I gathered in class and from overheard conversations outside it, they all seemed to share the same experience: they felt unprepared, they were slightly baffled by the professor's questions, and in the end it all worked out. After seeing this pattern repeated two or three times, I was pretty confident that my group's presentation would yield the same result. I'd like to tell you what happened, but I can't. I was utterly perplexed as the presentation was happening, and afterwards my brain blocked out the details out of shame. (That's how repression works, right?) After a group presentation, each student in said group is expected to submit a short "aftermath report" to the professor, explaining what you learned from the experience. Although I managed to write a page or so, I think my response basically amounted to: "Uh, um, erm, what? Sorry." Thankfully, the professor actually writes back when you send in these reports, and his message made me feel a little better about the whole experience, because I sensed an understanding that I wasn't to blame.

My memories of leaving class that day remain in tact, as local peers sympathized and told me it seemed harsh. Outside the building, as one of my group members lit up a fag (cigarette, remember), he suggested we should intentionally sign up for the next round of presentations together, keeping the group in tact, in an effort to redeem ourselves. Sure, I thought, what a great idea. We had worked well enough together in the time leading up to the class. What happened today was just a fluke. Cut to our classroom the following week and my old fag-smoking acquaintance hasn't even shown up, so it's his loss when I sign up for my own presentation date with two new group members. Let me tell you, what a difference. This story has a happy ending, in the form of my second presentation, which goes swimmingly. Our presentation went so well that, the next day, that same professor is teaching a lecture, and he does something I've never seen another lecturer here do: he mentions his seminar group and tells us about an insight made during our presentation, a point which he says he has never seen in any of the books on the subject, an idea which was my idea. Sure, he didn't call me by name or point me out in the lecture hall or anything, but it was great to hear him say it in front of a big group of my peers. And of course it wouldn't have happened without my other group members, for whom I would go to several more classes just to have continued literary conversations with them. (But I don't have to, beceause my classes have been over for a long time.)

A certain level of preparation made a huge difference between those two presentations, but so did the people I was working with and the reading material we had to discuss. So how much preparation should I be doing for my exams now? I'll continue taking notes and studying quotes, but generally I'm going to take it easy this time. Besides, if I can't b.s. my way through a couple of essay questions on a literature exam by now, then the education system has totally failed me.

May 04, 2011

I really should've blogged yesterday, or written anything for that matter. I spent so much time bored and sitting at my computer, doing next to nothing. That's not completely fair. There was a point in the afternoon when I got it into my head to do something productive: updating an Excel spreadsheet which I haven't opened in months. You hear Microsoft Excel and you might think I was doing work with numbers or some other such thing that I never, ever do. My "submission spreadsheet" is just a handy tool that I use to keep track of what writing pieces I've sent out, where I've submitted them, and the status of those submissions, etc. It's a really helpful document as long as I actually keep it up to date, but due to some neglect I had to do some retconning to it yesterday. Understand what that means: that for a period of months, whenever I got a rejection letter in my inbox, I was actually too lazy to just open up an Excel document and type in a few letters. Of course maybe it's not laziness. Maybe I didn't want to edit those little data fields to say "Rejected" because that would make the rejection real. That's a silly non-insight that I just made up, not a genuine feeling I have. The letter saying "no, thank you" makes the rejection quite real enough.

Looking over that spreadsheet yesterday, I realized that it was this time last year that I started submitting my short story, "Echo Point," to various magazines across the internet. At the time, nearing the end of last spring semester, I was riding the high of taking a wonderful course called Editing and Publishing, now renamed Small Press Editing & Publishing in order to differentiate it from other related classes cropping up in the curriculum. That's a result of the new Publishing & Editing minor which was just officially launched at SU recently. Apparently there's a member of the English department staff who has been lobbying for the creation of this academic program for a long, long time. I really wish that they (the mythic "they," whoever was holding his plans back) had given in a couple of years sooner (I'm obviously over-simplifying the issue, it probably took all those years to work out the details of the minor). Point is, the minor came into existence just too late for me to be a part of it, which is hugely disappointing because I'm so interested in the subject. I count my blessings, though, because as I said I already took one course last spring, and I'm hopeful that I'll be able to take the new Introduction to Modern Publishing class next spring.

I feel like I just got sidetracked ten times. Where was I? Okay, Editing and Publishing was a wonderful course that exposed me to a wide, fascinating world of literary magazines, and the more I learned the more I wanted to become a part of this community. Finally, at the beginning of last May, I took the latest draft of "Echo Point" and emailed it off into the world, in the form of submissions to PANK, Monkeybicycle, and several others in the days that followed. Because the editor of PANK is amazing, I had my first rejection, even with a personalized note about my story, the very next day. I hadn't felt so much like a writer since I wrote the first draft of "Echo Point" during my first semester of freshman year. That fall I was taking an Intro to Fiction workshop, so you'd think that I wrote it for my class, but "Echo Point" was much more organic than that. I wrote the first draft of this story on a whim after, while in the shower, I thought of a few funny ways to describe a girl that the narrator was infatuated with. I started to think up this character with a smart and witty voice who knows that he's about to get dumped, and he cares, but in a weird, submissive way, because he holds the girl on such an impossibly high pedastal, so she's way out of his league (and other cliches that are probably the reason this isn't published anywhere). Like he's all too aware that he's undergoing a rite of passage. It was just meant to be a "short short," and arguably it still is in its present form. It's in that weird, ethereal space where it's probably too long to be considered a "short short" but it's an awfully short "short story." These designations are all subjective and borderline arbitrary, anyway. I try not to bother with them. Point is, I felt like a writer because I thought of an idea without prompting and I wrote something without being assigned to do it. (I can feel you patting me on the back. Now where's my gold star?) And to complete the portrait of this young man as an artist, I wrote it all down, longhand, in my Moleskine noteboook.

I also wrote it in something of a hurry because that same night some friends of mine in the writing department were holding an Open Mic at the local coffeehouse. This would turn out to be the first of many such events, all of which I would attend and enjoy. So on this particular day, probably about two and a half years ago, I got it into my head that I could not only start but finish a first draft of this short piece of fiction before the Open Mic where I would read it for an audience. I took my notebook with me everywhere I went throughout that afternoon and evening, probably scribbling sentences during dinner, even writing the final paragraphs at the coffeeshop just before the start of the event. At this point in the story's infancy, I had entitled it "Those Manipulative Bitches," as I told the audience of a few dozen peers and a few professors. (I have my friend Ian to thank for the current title, "Echo Point," which he delivered unto me with no knowledge of the story. I just asked for a good name for an overlook, he mentioned a real place called Echo Point, and man was it perfect.) Remember, I'm still a freshman at this point, and for some people in the room this is probably their introduction to me. I felt a little nervous (and a little dressed up, as I recall) as I stood at the microphone. I read in the voice of my newly created narrator (which is not to say that I was acting; he sounds a lot like me). The Hitler joke got a lot of laughs, so that was a relief. The Nietzsche reference, not as much, but that's to be expected. Most of all, I just remember feeling good about this story. I feel better about it than any story that I actually wrote for my fiction class that same semester. So, sporadically, I worked on it in the months that followed, typing it up and editing new drafts of it.

For a while the story sat and waited patiently on my hard drive, collecting dust-bytes (this is the kind of unspeakable cleverness that the literary magazine scene needs). Then Editing and Publishing produced a fervor for literary magazines in me, and I resurrected it. Since then, it's been read by two of my professors who have kindly provided feedback, and I've sent it out to almost thirty magazines. Most of those submissions happened some months ago, but it's a good habit and a fun hobby that I'm looking to get back into. In the year since I sent that first submission to PANK, "Echo Point" has met with rejection approximately twenty-five times. That's one full year of failure. Well, that's not completely fair. It's been nothing but failure for this one story, but I've had some moments of success with other pieces, mostly in the genre of nonfiction. Still, "Echo Point" continues to have this special place in my heart (or perhaps in my persistently cliche-generating brain). It's the story that started my submission kick. It's a work I continue to fight for, encouraged by every note from an editor that says "This was close" or some variation on that theme. It's the reason I started this Excel spreadsheet. And maybe I'll still be trying to get it published years from now, when I'm running my own little literary magazine, a dream of mine I fully intend to pursue. But I'll power through every rejection letter, each one an echo of the last. Keenly aware that this kind of failure is a rite of passage.

May 02, 2011

I've just got to blog about something besides blogging. That's what this blog needs, something far less meta. (I just typed "meat" instead of "meta." Those are two words that shouldn't be so similar.) You know, after all these years, I still think the word "blog" is stupid. I much prefer "weblog." That word is short enough. Why did you have to go and abbreviate it into a monosyllabic turd-word that sounds like an onomatopoeia for the sounds emanating from a gross, overcrowded barn? That's a tangent and I could delete it, but I'm not here to practice editing. I'm here to write what feels right, and today that means giving you some insight into my time abroad. I've been living and studying in Glasgow, Scotland for about four months now, and there's many different ways I could approach the daunting task of beginning to tell you about my experience. Unfortunately for all of us, what's on my mind first and foremost right now is not exactly the most exhilerating facet of my life here: the academic component. Now, back in the states, I go to this really cute, charming liberal arts college where I study creative writing. Months ago, after a lot of deliberation, I picked up a double major when I added English to my program. I could take this story back even further to describe the details of how I reached that decision, including the disillusionment with my own creative abilities, the professor who insisted that I should declare a double major in English and philosophy and enter law school upon graduation, and the creeping doubt that most of my writing talent lay in critical analysis. Look at the way I'm writing here and now. Isn't my prose distinctly stiff? So I thought the double major in English and creative writing would help cover all my bases and foster my talents.

I'm looking at that huge block of text above me and I haven't even taken you into Glasgow yet. Now I remember why I quit blogging for so long. The way I do it, it's so time consuming. Okay, the decision to declare the double major took time, so much time that I had some catching up to do, so I resigned myself to the fact that I'd spend my junior year of college "OD-ing" on English courses. To continue using that language, I wish that someone would have stepped in and offered an intervention. Last fall, at SU, I was taking one creative writing course and three (count 'em, three) English courses. I knew it wouldn't be pretty, but I was excited about starting an English major. Of course, as it turns out, what better way to burn me out on English classes altogether than to take three at once? Yes, my former feelings of self-doubt concerning my allegiance to the creative writers quickly reshaped into a disillusionment with the English department. You read that right. No self-doubt here; no, not in English classes. Might sound conceited, but it's the truth. Instead, I doubted that I was enjoying my new academic program, that I actually wanted to be an English major. Cut to me arriving at the University of Glasgow (finally), and I'm not here to take any creative writing classes. I applied to come here for the semester to get more English credits, and who knows if there are any creative writing workshops offered here that are open to visiting students. (Well, some people must know, but I'm not one of them, because I didn't look into it.) No regrets, though, because I came here primarily to live in a foreign country for a while, not to study English. When I say "study abroad," the emphasis strictly falls on abroad.

During week one, part of orientation was this "supermarket session" where representatives from each academic department sat at tables where visiting students could walk up, ask them questions, and sign up for classes. I sit down to talk with this guy from the English literature department. He's young with a nice haircut and glasses. The only intimidating thing about him is his accent, which of course I'm hearing everywhere but still getting used to at this moment in time. I give him my name, he looks through a list, and he tells me I've qualified for "Level 3 Honours" courses. (Yes, he said "Honours" with a "u" in it. I could hear it.) Side note or flashback or something: I've been told by this point that a sixty credit course load is normal and that each course is typically twenty credits, ergo expect to take three classes. Lo and behold, the slick department representative tells me that Honours courses are worth thirty credits each. Just like that, I only have to take two classes. If you're reading this, you might go to my college, and you might not have known that already. You're probably taking four or five classes like I normally would be right now. I want to half-sincerely apologize. I'd like to tell you that our course loads even out beacuse I've had to do way more work for these two tough classes, but that's so far from the truth. It's disgusting how much free time I've had. Of course, it's not supposed to be free time. I'm meant to be doing a lot more reading. That's one of the differences between the academic systems in the US and the UK. I guess I should be talking more about those.

Basically, our classes are a lot more structured in the states. "Read exactly this number of pages in the next two days and we'll discuss them in the next class." That's your assignment two or three times a week, more or less. Over here, there's a lot more freedom in their academic approach. "Here's a long, long, very long list of things to read. Read some of them on your own time based on what appeals to you." At home, a literature class means discussion-based meetings either two or three times a week for what often feels like the rest of your life. In these parts, such meetings are called tutorials or seminars, and there's only one per week. Just sixty to ninety minutes of discussion per week, depending on the class. Add to that the lectures, conducted by various professors, which only tag on an extra couple of hours per week. But I've got another bombshell to drop that might make you furious at me if you're reading this from U.S. Academia. Bear in mind that, from what I've heard, this detail is specific to the University of Glasgow and isn't found at colleges all across the UK. Do I hear a drumroll? Feel free to bang on your desk as you read this part. My lectures and seminars ended over a month ago. I haven't had class since the last week in March. The curious and/or infuriated reader may ask, What are you still doing there? Two things: traveling around Europe, and procrastinating when I'm meant to be studying for exams.

And therein lies the reason that all this is on my mind in the first place: the dreaded final exams. At my home university, holding a final exam for a literature class is something of a foreign notion. Okay, one of my recent English classes had a final of sorts, but even that was largely a take-home test. Nine times out of ten, you're expected to write a final paper, not take a test. I haven't taken an English exam since high school. And really, at the risk of sounding nationalistic, doesn't the American way make more sense? People with careers in the field of English literature (professors and ... uh, just professors, I guess) are expected to write papers for the rest of their working lives. No one asks them to sit down in a room with a blue book and answer a few questions in the form of spontaneous, mediocre essays. I've been panicking a little about my two upcoming exams, both about a week away now, not sure how best to prepare. One of my local peers told me how to find past exam questions on the university library web site. I went dipping into those databases today in a rare moment of non-procrastination, and I opened a year-old Irish literature exam file to find that it was an eight page document. You're meant to answer three questions, which sounds rough, until you realize that you're presented with up to thirty-five options to choose from. It's going to take me about half an hour just to choose my three questions. On the bright side, with questions like "What difficulties do you find in modern literature?" (seriously, that's a pretty close paraphrase), I'm less worried about the tests now.

And finally, to provide some resolution to an issue alluded to earlier, I've recently decided that I'm definitely dropping that English major, making it into a minor instead. I still realize that my foremost talent may be in writing stiff, analytical papers about literature, but the past year has taught me that I often don't find a sense of fun and fulfillment in the classes that go along with it. I've got just one year left at the tiny Pennsylvania university I love so much, and I'm determined to spend it being a creative writer above all else. That's why, at registration time this semester, I signed up to take three writing classes all in the Fall semester, assuring that I will become burnt out on that major as well and proving once again that learning from past mistakes is not my forte.

May 01, 2011

What year is it? Where do I begin? No, not at the beginning. Linear storytelling won't do. I have an idea.

Jump to some time last fall as I'm preparing to spend next semester abroad in Glasgow, when I receive an email about the most exciting job opportunity I've ever encountered. My home university is looking for a couple of students to write blogs during their time abroad, for which they would receive a small salary through the school. I want this job immediately. I couldn't be more qualified. Years of blogging (admittedly not recently) under my belt, and I'm a creative writing major. I apply for the job, and so does my girlfriend, Dana. We're comfortable with the fact that we're obviously competing for the position, especially because we'll both be studying in Scotland, she at Stirling and I at Glasgow (could that possibly be grammatically correct?), and no way are they going to pick us both.

Jump to all of the times in the past four months I've sat at this desk in front of this laptop, wasting hours upon hours reading articles on IGN and listening to podcasts when I could have been writing. Seriously, you can jump to all those moments simultaneously; they all look the same with slightly different outfits and weather outide the window to my right.

Jump to the moment I think of the perfect name for my school sponsored blog: "Oh, The Places You'll Glasgow!" I pat myself on the back for my cleverness and penchant for puns. I'm beaming with excitement at the idea that I'll get paid to blog again, finally an excuse to return to that modestly productive activity which I haven't revisited in months. A reason for my parents to keep paying the TypePad bill. (Sorry, Mom. Sorry, Dad. Also thank you.)

Jump to me starting to read the novel Invisible Monsters in early January. Jump to me finishing it ten weeks later. This is not a long book. I've been busy doing homework and procrastinating in a number of other less productive ways. Jump to me a few hours ago thinking, Wouldn't it be a neat idea to steal that "Jump to" technique for my next blog entry? It's not plagiarism if I mention the source, right?

Give me a formal letter of apology to Chuck Palahniuk.

Flash.

Give me confused readers who don't get any of these reference to the book.

Flash.

Jump to me getting to know Glasgow during the first week in January, thinking to myself, Well, my semester started earlier than most. Maybe SU hasn't picked the student bloggers yet. Jump to me and Dana realizing that enough time has passed and neither of us got a position. She reacted to this news by creating and maintaining her own blog. Now create a montage of me doing anything but blogging: taking photos, editing photos, putting those photos on Facebook, taking videos, editing videos, uploading videos to YouTube, answering questions on VYou, watching Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World seven times on my computer, going to class occasionally, reading, drawing, visiting Dana in Stirling, traveling around Europe, all the while documenting none of it, or at least not in writing, because like I said, videos.

Jump to me lying awake in bed two nights ago, asking myself tough questions. Haven't you heard countless professional writers say that you should write every day? When was the last time you really wrote something? Are you a writer when you're not writing? Think of how much time you let slip by at the computer, refreshing your email accounts and checking Whedonesque. Jump to the moment that all this self deprecation is replaced with the motivation to blog again. I have some old familar doubts, to be sure. Thoughts about how blogging can so often feel like shouting into a void. (Hello again, void!) But I tell myself I'll give it a shot anyway, simply because it's a better use of my time. Whether I'm waxing poetic about an exotic trip or just spouting out a stream of consciousness about Glee, it's more productive than reading Conan O'Brien's tweets.

Jump to me redesigning this blog because I want a fresh start. Jump to me sadly deleting the last eight posts I put up here in early January 2010, because together they made up an essay I wrote called "Show Stopper," which I'd love to see published somewhere someday, so I can't have it online. That's just unprofessional. I've been published in a few places now, but I don't know whether to talk about it or not. I'm torn between modesty and self-promotion. Maybe I'll put links up, maybe I won't. Jump to moments from now when I've finished writing this and I'm clicking the "Publish" button, fulfilled by my new bit of productivity, consumed by a renewed sense of hope for a new era of regular blogging.

Jump to a week from now when I've given up on this again. Jump to a year from now when I post another entry, apologizing and making new vows, trying to convince myself yet again that blogging is a productive, worthwhile activity.